Most reject the idea that it alone miraculously revived Europe, as evidence shows that a general recovery was already underway. Most believe that the Marshall Plan sped this recovery but did not initiate it. Many argue that the structural adjustments that it forced were of great importance. The political effects of the Marshall Plan may have been just as important as the economic ones. Marshall Plan aid allowed the nations of Western Europe to relax austerity measures and rationing, reducing discontent and bringing political stability.
The communist influence on Western Europe was greatly reduced, and throughout the region communist parties faded in popularity in the years after the Marshall Plan.
Note the pivotal position of the American flag. The Molotov Plan was the system created by the Soviet Union in to provide aid to rebuild the countries in Eastern Europe that were politically and economically aligned with the Soviet Union. This aid allowed countries in Europe to stop relying on American aid, and therefore allowed Molotov Plan states to reorganize their trade to the USSR instead. The plan was in some ways contradictory, however, because at the same time the Soviets were giving aid to Eastern bloc countries, they were demanding that countries who were members of the Axis powers pay reparations to the USSR.
Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Search for:. In the immediate post-World War II period, Europe remained ravaged by war and thus susceptible to exploitation by an internal and external Communist threat. Marshall issued a call for a comprehensive program to rebuild Europe. The Marshall Plan generated a resurgence of European industrialization and brought extensive investment into the region. It was also a stimulant to the U.
Although the participation of the Soviet Union and East European nations was an initial possibility, Soviet concern over potential U. As democracy collapsed, a single-party state founded the Nazi era.
As normal parliamentary lawmaking broke down and was replaced around by a series of emergency decrees, the decreasing popular legitimacy of the government further drove voters to extremist parties.
The Republic in its early years was already under attack from both left- and right-wing sources. Various right-wing sources opposed any democratic system, preferring an authoritarian, autocratic state like the Empire. The Weimar Republic had some of the most serious economic problems ever experienced by any Western democracy in history.
Rampant hyperinflation, massive unemployment, and a large drop in living standards were primary factors. In the first half of , the mark stabilized at about marks per dollar. By fall , Germany found itself unable to make reparations payments since the price of gold was now well beyond what it could afford.
Also, the mark was by now practically worthless, making it impossible for Germany to buy foreign exchange or gold using paper marks. Instead, reparations were to be paid in goods such as coal. In January , French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr, the industrial region of Germany in the Ruhr valley, to ensure reparations payments. Inflation was exacerbated when workers in the Ruhr went on a general strike and the German government printed more money to continue paying for their passive resistance.
By November , the US dollar was worth 4,2 trillion German marks. In , one loaf of bread cost 1 mark; by , the same loaf of bread cost billion marks. Hyperinflation in Weimar Republic: One-million mark notes used as notepaper, October From to , there was a short period of economic recovery, but the Great Depression of the s led to a worldwide recession. Germany was particularly affected because it depended heavily on American loans.
In , about 2 million Germans were unemployed, which rose to around 6 million in Many blamed the Weimar Republic. That was made apparent when political parties on both right and left wanting to disband the Republic altogether made any democratic majority in Parliament impossible. In addition, the rapid disintegration of Germany in by the return of a disillusioned army, the rapid change from possible victory in to defeat in , and the political chaos may have caused a psychological imprint on Germans that could lead to extreme nationalism, later epitomised and exploited by Hitler.
It is also widely believed that the constitution had several weaknesses, making the eventual establishment of a dictatorship likely, but it is unknown whether a different constitution could have prevented the rise of the Nazi party.
The dissolution of the German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires created a number of new countries in eastern Europe and the Middle East, often with large ethnic minorities. This caused numerous conflicts and hostilities. The years were marked by turmoil as Europe struggled to recover from the devastation of the First World War and the destabilizing effects of the loss of four large historic empires: the German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire.
There were numerous new nations in Eastern Europe, most of them small. Internally these new countries tended to have substantial ethnic minorities who wished to unite with neighboring states where their ethnicity dominated.
Millions of Germans found themselves in the newly created countries as minorities. More than two million ethnic Hungarians found themselves living outside of Hungary in Slovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia. Many of these national minorities found themselves in bad situations because the modern governments were intent on defining the national character of the countries, often at the expense of the minorities. The League of Nations sponsored various Minority Treaties in an attempt to deal with the problem, but with the decline of the League in the s, these treaties became increasingly unenforceable.
One consequence of the massive redrawing of borders and the political changes in the aftermath of World War I was the large number of European refugees. These and the refugees of the Russian Civil War led to the creation of the Nansen passport. Ethnic minorities made the location of the frontiers generally unstable.
Where the frontiers have remained unchanged since , there has often been the expulsion of an ethnic group, such as the Sudeten Germans. Economic and military cooperation among these small states was minimal, ensuring that the defeated powers of Germany and the Soviet Union retained a latent capacity to dominate the region. In the immediate aftermath of the war, defeat drove cooperation between Germany and the Soviet Union but ultimately these two powers would compete to dominate eastern Europe.
At the end of the war, the Allies occupied Constantinople Istanbul and the Ottoman government collapsed. The occupation of Smyrna by Greece on May 18, , triggered a nationalist movement to rescind the terms of the treaty. As a result, Turkey became the only power of World War I to overturn the terms of its defeat and negotiate with the Allies as an equal.
The right of peoples to self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international law. It states that peoples, based on respect for the principle of equal rights and fair equality of opportunity, have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no interference. The explicit terms of this principle can be traced to the Atlantic Charter, signed on August 14, , by Franklin D.
It also is derived from principles espoused by United States President Woodrow Wilson following World War I, after which some new nation states were formed or previous states revived after the dissolution of empires. The principle does not state how the decision is to be made nor what the outcome should be, whether it be independence, federation, protection, some form of autonomy, or full assimilation.
Neither does it state what the delimitation between peoples should be—nor what constitutes a people. There are conflicting definitions and legal criteria for determining which groups may legitimately claim the right to self-determination. The employment of imperialism through the expansion of empires and the concept of political sovereignty, as developed after the Treaty of Westphalia, also explain the emergence of self-determination during the modern era.
During and after the Industrial Revolution, many groups of people recognized their shared history, geography, language, and customs. Nationalism emerged as a uniting ideology not only between competing powers, but also for groups that felt subordinated or disenfranchised inside larger states; in this situation, self-determination can be seen as a reaction to imperialism.
Such groups often pursued independence and sovereignty over territory, but sometimes a different sense of autonomy has been pursued or achieved. Thomas Jefferson further promoted the notion that the will of the people was supreme, especially through authorship of the United States Declaration of Independence which inspired Europeans throughout the 19th century.
Leading up to World War I, in Europe there was a rise of nationalism, with nations such as Greece, Hungary, Poland, and Bulgaria seeking or winning their independence. They also supported the right of all nations, including colonies, to self-determination. The Constitution of the Soviet Union acknowledged the right of secession for its constituent republics. In January Wilson issued his Fourteen Points that among other things, called for adjustment of colonial claims insofar as the interests of colonial powers had equal weight with the claims of subject peoples.
The end of the war led to the dissolution of the defeated Austro-Hungarian Empire and the creation by the Allies of Czechoslovakia and the union of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and the Kingdom of Serbia as new states.
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